


to the next level

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 23:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10650267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: staying up too late lost in thought leads to a day trip and yet nothing really happening, but that’s not what matters.





	to the next level

Minghao wakes up to three texts sent at 3:21 in the morning. One of them is a notification about the automatic renewal of his cell phone plan. The next is a messy selfie from Jungkook in their group chat, which makes Minghao laugh. He looks like he’s having fun on tour.

The last:

 

(3:21) **hansol:** hyung lets go on a trip let's go

(10:43) lol what are you talking abt

(10:44) **hansol:** lets go

 

And they go.

“Let’s not tell the others,” he says, full of energy.

“Why,” Minghao asks, following Hansol down the stairs.

“Let’s just not. We're escaping.”

“Okay but if they text and ask we're telling.”

“Fine.” Hansol grins, satisfied.

 

###

 

“Where should we go?” Minghao asks, starting down the road. Hansol remains in front of the dorm building, frozen and mouth open.

“Shit, neither of us can drive.”

“Yeah,” Minghao says wryly. “That's true, and it’s always been true?”

“I was imagining this road trip. Like we'd go driving throughout Seoul, and just talk about nothing and everything and I don’t know, go museum hopping and shit.” Hansol looks disappointed, frustrated, but not sad, just feelings Minghao knows are ephemeral and will be forgotten when they have a new idea. Hansol never dwells on things, he lives in the moment.

“We can still do it Hansollie, just like, on the buses. Wait, did you bring your wallet?”

Hansol checks his pockets. “Phone, wallet. That’s all we really need, right?”

“Masks and hats,” Minghao says, but they already have those. “How much battery do you have?”

“Sixty-five percent...” Minghao raises an eyebrow. It’s only 11 in the morning and he hasn’t been awake that long. “I was watching funny videos with Seungkwan, leave me alone.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” His offended denial makes him look ridiculous. Hansol’s face breaks into this all consuming smile, and it’s enthralling, so contagious.

Minghao catches it, and they have a laughing fit in the middle of the street.

“I’m gonna get you a power bank so you don’t die of boredom two hours into the day,” Minghao says, tearing himself away, and Hansol pulls at his arm. “Your phone drains battery like crazy.”

“I won’t though, we’re gonna talk. I’ll be entertained for _hours._ "

“You want me to believe you,” Minghao says, and Hansol looks at him so he stares back. Hansol’s eyes are big and beautiful and probably easy to get lost in, so he refocuses onto the topic at hand, which is. Minghao forgets.

“Um.”

“Yeah, hyung?”

“I’m getting the power bank.”

 

###

 

Hansol will say he doesn’t have an agenda, which is why it doesn’t bother him when Minghao exits the building and says quietly, “I ran into Chan. He asked if he could join.”

There is a pause. “Okay sure, he can come.” The response is way too concurring for someone who’s made a fuss about going alone. Even for peace-loving Hansol.

“Not even gonna ask me if I told him or he asked first? Cause I let it slip by accident.”

“Hyung! You’re a sellout.”

“I’m joking, I didn’t run into anyone,” Minghao says, hitting Hansol on the shoulder and probably feeling the deep breath he just let out. “I was testing you.”

Hansol can’t figure out how to respond to that, never mind how to interpret it: there’s what he’d like to say to Minghao, and what he probably should say to Minghao. He doesn’t have a clue.

“...Well, now I want Chan to go with us.”

“Too late. Let’s go before we miss the bus and have to wait an hour for the next one.” Minghao grabs Hansol by the hand, and it slips into his easily.

 

###

 

They get on the bus and they don’t really know where they’re getting off. The first five minutes they kinda just spend talking about movies and forget they’re supposed to be going somewhere.

“Uhh... just look up somewhere to eat on your phone,” Hansol says when Minghao asks what the plan is. “I’m hungry.”

“Japanese, Korean, American, Chinese,” Minghao reads from the extensive list of categories available on the reviews website.

“I don’t even care, just pick somewhere that looks good.”

“You know I don’t care either,” Minghao points out. Hansol shrugs and looks over his shoulder.

“There.” He points to a cafe rated 4 stars and middle price range. Minghao says why not and they pull the cord for the next stop.

When the bus drives away, they realize Minghao typed the wrong neighborhood into the search box.

“Oops,” Minghao says, dragging out the end of the word. “My mistake. My clumsy finger’s mistake, really.” Hansol ruffles his brown hair and he says this again, lightly and sincerely.

“I really don’t care.”

They walk into the nearest local restaurant and sit in the corner, facing each other as they eat their fill of black bean noodles.

 

###

 

The art museum is kinda boring, but that’s why it’s fun to go with Hansol.

“Look, that’s just a pile of scrap metal,” Minghao points out in the contemporary and modern wing.

“Art is good shit, hyung,” Hansol says. “It’s our escape from reality. It’s our way of expressing ourselves and what’s wrong with the world.” The metal means something about the waste of raw materials in manufacturing and the cost on the environment, which does sound like an important issue now that he understands what the piece is.

“That’s really deep, Hansollie. This is why I love you.”

Minghao points to an abstract painting on the wall, paint splatters and no printed explanation on the side.

“That said, sometimes it’s just shit,” Hansol continues, and pulls Minghao out of the room.

 

“Stop running off,” Minghao tells Hansol in the history museum. “I’m responsible here, and if I lose you Coups hyung will have my head.”

“You’re so slow,” Hansol complains. Minghao likes to take his time reading the information plates, while Hansol admittedly skips past them to look at the models of stars and black holes.

Minghao rolls his eyes. “Just stay close.”

“Hyung, you always do this,” Hansol says, laughing. “Tell me to do stuff, then realize I’m right and give up. Cause I’m just too much fun to be around.”

“I do not,” Minghao retorts, also laughing. When this happens, Minghao basically loses all of his already limited authority. Hansol pinches his cheek and runs away, the ensuing chase only stopped by museum security.

 

###

 

Some things it is very easy to be honest about, like the fact that Hansol thinks almost everything Minghao does is funny. It’s an innocent feeling, and Hansol lets that show pretty much all the time. He’s too transparent to even attempt to hide that, anyway.

More than that will leave him too vulnerable, so he settles for indirect hints and reading into Minghao’s responses.

“I get so tired of life sometimes,” Hansol mumbles. His head nods back and forth as the bus rolls over potholes.

“Tired like you need a break from Seventeen, or tired like you’re sleepy because you were up until 4 last night?” Minghao asks skeptically from the seat to his right. They’re sitting at the very back, squished between other commuters. The warm sunlight from outside is making Hansol too comfortable.

“Tired of living on planet Earth,” Hansol says. He waits, and when Minghao does nothing, he goes on. “I want to move to Mars.”

“Alone?” He expects this question. That he does is either a sign of knowing Minghao too well or being delusional.

“Do you want to come with me?”

Hansol’s blinking rapidly to stay alert at this point but he makes the effort to turn to Minghao’s face. His expression is blank, unreadable. The surprise of that makes Hansol’s eyes open wide, to see more clearly, or something. Minghao turns away.

“Hyung?”

Minghao pulls Hansol’s drifting head to his left shoulder and looks out the window without answering.

Hansol thinks, finally, and he falls asleep.

 

###

 

His shoulder is starting to get stiff, and they’re close to their home stop. Still, Hansol is sleeping soundly, and Minghao can’t even bring himself to take an embarrassing picture of him with his right hand, not with all these strangers looking at them. They pass their neighborhood and Minghao thinks, well, he’ll wake Hansol up in 10 minutes or so and they’ll take the bus back.

At almost 3 in the afternoon, Minghao receives a single text.

 

(14:48) **mingyu:** where are u

(14:49) out

(14:49) having fun

(14:49) **mingyu:** are u coming back soon or should i drill these glasses without u

(14:49) **mingyu:** hahahahahaha

(14:49) **mingyu:** with?

(14:51) just go ahead

(14:51) it’s a secret

(14:51) **mingyu:** it’s fucking hansol everyone else is here

(14:51) secret

(14:52) don’t ask if you already know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(14:52) **mingyu:** don’t get mad if i drill ur glasses to pieces!!!!!!!!!!!!

(14:53) i love you! (heart emoji)(two hearts emoji)(five hearts emoji)

(14:53) **mingyu:** ok

 

Typing his replies is a slow struggle. Hansol is still sleeping on his shoulder. Meanwhile, they’re five stops past theirs, and the sunlight is really, really making Minghao’s throat dry.

“Wake up Hansol,” Minghao says, roughly shaking his arm. “This is what you get for not maintaining your own health.”

“Mhmpghmfh,” Hansol answers, before slumping back over Minghao’s chest. Minghao catches him before he falls headfirst into someone else’s lap, and resigns himself to the new position. At least it’s his right arm this time.

 

###

 

Hansol dreams about art, and escape. He dreams about Minghao as a painting, like the one Nu’est’s Minki used on Produce 101 - his heart breaks, and the paper rips, and yet it’s okay because Minghao exists in real life. That picture was too perfect anyway.

Minghao understands Hansol, he thinks he understands Minghao, for the most part - there’s so much he simultaneously wishes he could know and is afraid to know - so being around him is easy. It’s comfortable. Life is difficult, and Minghao’s not complicated.

He dreams about space and the creation of the universe, the way their planet was formed and the continents shifted together, and all the events from millions of years ago that fit together exactly to create the world as it is today.

Hansol thinks then that every little blessing he’s been thankful for during his lifetime is something small.

 

###

 

Minghao tries again, and Hansol gets up, if only because Minghao threatens to leave him on the bus.

“We should have gone to another place, Myungho hyung, it’s really not museum hopping if we only go to two museums,” Hansol nags, putting on his best cute faces. Minghao looks tired. It’s the younger’s job to cheer the elders and stuff. Hansol laughs, because Minghao is only 3 months older than him and the thought of him being an elder is hilarious.

“ _You_ fell asleep during our day trip.”

Hansol shuts up.

Minghao laughs, and Hansol starts it up again.

“Do you think if people could live on Mars, life there would just be the same as here? Like all our problems, hunger, people being shitty to each other, would just be replicated there?”

“Definitely,” Minghao says.

“Then why go?”

“The good things will be different. The view’s gonna be incredible, duh. The experiences will be different. Plus, you asked me.”

That’s all it took, for Hansol to ask Minghao, to get him to agree. This is hypothetical, but it’s enough.

They take a detour, passing the bigger streets with the shops so they have something to look at and maybe spend some more money (or time). The wind is picking up, and neither of them really planned for this, so Hansol in his short sleeved blue t-shirt takes this as an excuse to cling to Minghao.

“Get off me,” Minghao says, lifting his head exasperatedly to the sky. “I had enough of this on the bus. Not in the mood.”

“Come on, just until I get a jacket.”

“Or, we could just run back to the dorms,” Minghao offers, and Hansol pouts.

“You want to buy me a jacket.”

“No,” he starts, as Hansol makes eye contact, and then he says, “I’m _going_ to buy you a jacket.”

 

###

 

“Hey, my phone’s not dead yet, and I didn’t even touch the power bank,” Hansol says triumphantly.

“So why were you up so late last night after all?” Minghao asks, a block away from their dorm, one hand carrying shopping bags, the other in Hansol’s. “Playing on it?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Why?”

Hansol thinks, and considers the benefits and risks of being honest here and now. No matter what, it won’t be a regret.

But not yet.

“No reason. Nothing happened.”

(Just you.)

**Author's Note:**

> (mingsol city) yeah i check in hell yeah i check in i check in
> 
> gyuhao is like my entire life but mingsol is too in a different way i don’t know how to explain but i love verkwan too so that’s great


End file.
